The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe ~ The Imaginative Conservator

The apparitions and message of Our Lady of Tepeyac are a testimony to God’s love and mercy toward us today as it was nearly 500 years ago. It is an apparition and message of love that we all hunger for and that can draw us all to the source of life and grace in our Lord Jesus Christ.

I recently completed a new book about the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The book is called The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and is available for pre-order on August 22, in memory of Queen Mary. It will be officially released on October 7, in memory of Our Lady of the Rosary.

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The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupeby Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke (Flores Mariae, 2024, 212 pages)

Everything my family gave me was with me when I entered the diocesan minor seminary, Holy Cross Seminary in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1962, which coincided with the beginning of the first session of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

At that time the seminary was filled to the brim with seminarians. When I entered, I was given a personal copy of the Free usualis so that a few hours each week can be devoted to perfecting Gregorian chant, in particular to learning the appropriate chants for each Sunday and feast.

Those early years of seminary formation seemed like a time of tranquility. Yet within five years, the seminary suffered, in a particularly devastating way, the crisis that the Church experienced during the early years of implementing the teachings of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. This implementation unfortunately took a very man-centered approach, with many strange ideas about how to make the liturgy “interesting.” (It seems almost blasphemous to me to say that we must make the liturgy interesting. What is more interesting in itself and more convincing than knowing that the Sacred Liturgy is the gift of God’s encounter with us?) Many seminarians have abandoned the prayer of the Rosary, saying that it was the type of prayer that Our Lord condemned as “nonsense” (Mt 6:7), or that, if you prayed the Rosary, you did not have a proper appreciation of the Mass and the other liturgical actions of the Church. Free usualis Gregorian chant was also suddenly and completely abandoned, and Gregorian chant was replaced, in large part, by chants elaborated according to the standards of popular music and accompanied by guitar and percussion. Many of the riches of our life in Christ in the Church, which had developed over the Christian centuries and which had been so important to my family and me, were suddenly and sometimes violently questioned, ridiculed, repudiated and cast aside.

In a very short time, the places of celebration of the liturgy, sacred architecture, and sacred music have experienced a great decline. Indeed, the true reform desired by the Council Fathers has often been betrayed and must be studied anew and implemented according to the teaching and practice of the Church, as they have been handed down to us since the time of the Apostles.

In 1975, when I was ordained a priest and appointed vice-rector of the Cathedral of St. Joseph the Worker in La Crosse, Wisconsin, I was shocked to discover that the religious life of the Church had suffered total devastation. There were no more Eucharistic devotions, except, of course, the visit to the Blessed Sacrament. I visited the homes of parishioners and discovered that there were no sacred objects in the house. It was very rare to find a family praying the Rosary. In some homes there were no more prayers before and after meals. I was also involved in Catholic schools and discovered that religious life there too had disappeared. This concerned me greatly.

As a priest, I have tried to do what I can to reintroduce devotional life, because it is impossible to have a solid relationship with Our Lord, as we do perfectly and fully through the sacred liturgy, especially through the Holy Eucharist, our participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and our encounter with Him in confession, without expressing ourselves in acts of devotion throughout the day and in the different places where we find ourselves. In a way, in a kind of erroneous notion, after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, it was thought that the only way to express one’s love for the Lord was through the sacred liturgy.

The sacred liturgy is of course the most complete and perfect expression, but it is an expression that is offered to us in those very central moments of our life, but which cannot be done throughout the day, at home, at work, at study, during leisure and in our other human activities. Because of the intensity of the liturgical encounter and, above all, our love for the Holy Eucharist, we want to bring the reality of this encounter into our homes and other familiar places. We do this with sacred images, with prayers and with other special devotions. Yet, as a priest, I have been able to do a little to remedy the lack of devotional life in the family.

On December 10, 1994, I was installed as Bishop of La Crosse. At that time, I began to reflect and pray about the pastoral needs of the entire diocese, which would soon become my primary concern. Having grown up in the diocese and having been ordained a priest for the diocese, my reflection and prayers were filled with the deepest affection for the people of the diocese. When I was installed as the eighth Bishop of La Crosse on February 22, 1995, I spoke of my pastoral concern for the family that has suffered so much abuse in our time. I also expressed my concern about the violence that is increasingly marking our American culture.

Faced with the pastoral reality of the life of the Catholic faith in our diocese, I became increasingly convinced of the need for a place of pilgrimage, an extraordinary place in the diocese where the faithful could come at any time, but especially in moments of special joy and special need to renew themselves in faith and grace. I also understood that this place of pilgrimage had to be dedicated to our Blessed Mother, the first and best of us who are disciples of her Son, who prays and works constantly to bring us closer to the Redemption that her Son offers us in the Church. More specifically, in America, our Blessed Mother showed the love and mercy of God the Father for all his children, especially for those most in need, through her apparitions in Tepeyac in 1531 to the humble and faithful Amerindian Saint Juan Diego and his uncle Juan Bernardino.

The apparitions and message of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Tepeyac show God’s love and mercy toward us today as much as it did nearly 500 years ago. In fact, through the wonderful and scientifically inexplicable imprint of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the mantle or Tilma of Saint Juan Diego, work of the hand of God, Our Lady continues to appear to those who come to venerate her at the place of her apparitions, in present-day Mexico City. It is an apparition and a message of love for which we all hunger and which can draw us all to the source of life and grace in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Then, in a pastoral letter in 1996, I announced that as a preparation for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, and for the spiritual good of the faithful in our diocese and of the faithful far beyond who seek to place their lives before the Lord in prayer and to receive from the Lord renewed faith and grace, I would establish in the diocese a place of pilgrimage – a tomb dedicated to Our Lady, the Virgin Mother of God.

The above is an excerpt from The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

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